In the past years conventional filter coffee machines have dramatically lost market share to modern semi-automatic single-serve coffee machines as well as to fully automatic coffee machines. Especially the possibility to produce various different types of coffee recipes with one and the same machine, the possibility to easily adjust the strength of the coffee and the easy handling of such single-serve and fully automatic coffee machines have led a lot of consumers to replace their conventional filter coffee machines by these modern coffee machine types.
While modern coffee machines are especially suitable for brewing espresso coffee or coffee having the typical cream, a lot of consumers still prefer the taste of a “regular” coffee produced by a filter coffee machine. More and more consumers therefore tend back to conventional filter coffee machines for reasons of taste.
Compared to single-serve or fully automatic coffee machines most of the conventional filter coffee machines do not allow to adjust the strength of the coffee in an easy manner. What one can do is altering the ratio between water and ground coffee when preparing a brew by adding more or less coffee. However, the strength and taste profile of the coffee is still hard to adjust in an accurate manner. Nevertheless, such an easy adjustment of the strength and taste profile of the coffee becomes more and more important. People like to drink coffee, but the more people, the more difference in taste. The same works for the drip. Some like their coffee strong, some like it milder.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,779,437 B2 presents a filter coffee machine that comprises a water distributor having a center flow-through opening and a plurality of further flow-through openings surrounding the center flow-through opening. The strength of the coffee may be influenced by selecting the openings through which the injected water drizzles into the filter placed in the brewing chamber. If the brewing water flows exclusively through the centrally arranged flow-through opening of the water distributor, the coffee grounds in the filter receptacle are swirled up strongly and result in the brewing of a relatively strong coffee. On the other hand, if the water flows through the remaining flow-through openings located outside of the center, a milder coffee is brewed.
Even though the general possibility to select the strength of the coffee in the way explained in U.S. Pat. No. 6,779,437 B2 has shown to be advantageous, the technical way the water is distributed in the therein shown device has shown to be disadvantageous. One of the main disadvantages of this device is the lack of equal distribution of the water to each of the flow-through openings.
Thus, there is still room for improvement.
Further dispensing spouts for coffee machines which offer the possibility to select the strength of the coffee are known from DE 297 11 421 U1, GB 2 321 179 A, U.S. Pat. No. 5,477,775 A and from U.S. Pat. No. 4,056,050 A.